Rhode Island

Recent Articles

Writer, performer and visual artist Brenda Bell Brown, renowned Twin Cities fixture, utilizes the concepts of art and culture as more than an aesthetic pursuit. She successfully realizes them as a community resource. Point in case, a mere partial listing of her accomplishments includes membership in such prestigious institutions as the Black Storytellers Alliance, the Archie Givens Foundation Black Writers Collaborative, and, in her native Tennessee, the Blues City Cultural Center. She earned as well a 2010 Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership Grant and twice sat as a cultural liaison to the Minnesota State Arts Board. Indeed, to Brown, culture and community are inextricably part and parcel of life itself. Continue Reading →

For the past decade now, when this holiday season rolls around we can always count on a yearly kerfuffle from someone from the Right — the continuing war on Christmas. That this annual present comes this year from a host on Fox News is no surprise. On her recent show The Kelly File, Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly ignited a conflagration when she stated that both Jesus and Santa Claus are White. Kelly’s assertion was a response to Aisha Harris’s (African American, and Slate culture blogger) contestation that the commercial image of Santa Claus, in this day and age, should no longer be a White man, but rather a penguin. ”Two decades later, America is less and less White, but a melanin-deficient Santa remains the default in commercials, mall casting calls, and movies. Continue Reading →